Re: Pragmatic Cosmos

Thread:
JBD:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15230
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15235
SJ:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15236
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15237
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15238
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15239
HR:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15240

Peircers,

It is only human of human beings to project their affairs on celestial spheres but doing so does not alter the 
circumstance that we project our own images from anthropic centers.  There are times when our projections hit the mark. 
  And there are times when we end up imagining the universe compassed by Bearded Father Figures (BFFs).  Speculative 
projections require critical reflection to sift the reality from the fantasy.

I am mainly concerned with inquiry as a form of human conduct, a practical activity carried on by individuals and 
communities, increasingly supported by the tools our species of tool-makers has evolved and learned to make.  Thus I 
view inquiry stereoscopically, from two distinct angles, descriptive and instrumental.

On the descriptive side, Peirce's work on relations in general and sign relations in particular gives us, perhaps for 
the first time in history, a paradigm of theoretical models adequate to the task of describing inquiry.  The category 
theory developed by mathematicians has many applications in describing the functions and structures of inquiry, 
especially if the potential generalizations of category theory to handle relations in their own terms can be realized.

On the instrumental side, we have the task of engineering software that can better aid inquiry.  Building instruments to 
extend our capacities in any realm requires a model of the organon that nature gave us, and so we "prime the pump" of 
the instrumental task by knowing ourselves first. Given that start, the cycle of amplification can begin.

Regards,

Jon

-- 

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